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In December 2012 Collin (the boyfriend) and I spoilt ourselves with a European almost Christmas. From the 8th till the 24th we ate snow in Sweden, frolicked at Disney land in Paris, and warmed ourselves with gluhwein in a German medieval Christmas market. I hope we were the envy of many because it was blooming expensive and massively awesome.

As much as I look so forward to repetitively informing you on every detail of our over seas experience, I’ll leave that to dinners with our parents, and focus here on Disney Land Paris – where you have to go!!

Collin, who is 5 in his head

My official title is Her Royal Derpiness Bron The-list-maker Stawbe, and it’s all rather suspiciously accurate. In preparation for this trip, Google drive was my best friend, nothing went unlisted, and no list went unchecked. As magical as a spontaneous back packer’s wandering through europe sounds, consider that whatever you haven’t planned before you board you will have to worry about once you’re there (in your precious and pricey holiday time). Before you even pack your bags, plan plan plan:

Browse disneylandparis.com extensively and clue yourself up on any deals, combos, or promotions they have running. There’s always something so dig deep.

Book your tickets online months in advance. You’re likely to get a better price, and enjoy the anticipation more. Then remember to

Print your tickets and keep them safe with your flight tickets

Book for 3 or 4 days. When we first booked our tickets, I though we were spoiling ourselves with 2 days tickets, but once there we realized if we really wanted to experience Disney Land we’d have to be there at least 3 days.

Consider staying in the Disney hotels. They’re most likely outside of your accommodation budget, but heads up, if you’re staying in the park’s hotels you get to enter the park before its officially open and we managed several rides before the gates were even open. We also loved the hotel itself, which was setup in a cowboy theme as an entire western town. So maybe consider shifting some of your entertainment budget into this accommodation. Also look out for the 3 nights for the price of 2 specials.

Download the Disney Land Paris App. This was incredibly helpful and we became entirely dependent on it. Assign one of yourselves as the navi and keep the app at hand. We could use it to track each other around the parks (hello parents!?) and keep an eye on queue lengths and show times. But remember before you head to Disney to

Arrange a French sim card. This you can do in France, but do yourself a favor and google this before hand, we had a hard time finding a service provider that would work in our phones, and didn’t need us to be living there. We did in the end though, so roaming is not essential.

Use this mapto book accommodation in Paris. It was very difficult to figure out where to book our stay, and we initially booked a hotel based on it’s location on Paris’ street map. Beeeg mistake. As tourists you’ll inevitably be using what’s called the RER (trains), and you pay for how many zones you have to travel through to get somewhere. Thus beware, your hotel could look on google maps like it’s right near the places you want to be, but you might have to fork out extra cash getting to train intersections that cross in different zones. All very helpful to know before hand. Don’t be daunted, just do your homework.

Perhaps pack an extra phone battery or booster. The parks are open from early till late and your smart phones will suffer. Don’t risk missing those evening pics because you’ve had your gps, camera, 3g, Disney app etc running all day. Collin and I allocated different tasks between our phones and downloaded battery saving apps.

…and then you can enjoy.

Once we were all set, complete with Bron-lists, maps, apps and cameras, we had an absolutely ridiculously incredible time. Everything was worth it, and every moment was as magical as Disney promised us throughout our childhood.

We avoided queues by going on week days during Paris’ school term, and with little hassle ran straight through to Space Mountain, the Haunted Mansion, Le Petit Choo Choo (Collin insisted), and of course as many Disney princesses as we could find (because one day I will show this to my children and tell them I know Belle personally, we’re tight).

We took a few days to do every ride, and take every photo, and dedicated one day just to catching every show and parade and quantifying Collin’s duck noise (it’s a thing, he’s one of them, don’t judge, we all have our people we belong to, Collin’s just aren’t people).

You’re allowed to take food and drink into Disney Land, so we made a ritual of stopping at a store at our station in the morning and grabbing a pack of six croissants, cheese slices and a few bottles of cool drink, but we did brave the costs of a hot chocolate and a Nutella Crêpe (do it!) every morning.

Cinderella’s Castle – where I tried to hide away and live forever. Dragons got involved, it was all very unfair.

No matter how worn out, cold, wet, or hungry we were, every night at Disney land was worth sticking around till the last minutes for possibly the most romantic, magical, disney moment of our lives. I have never seen that many lights, fire, lasers, fountains, fireworks and memorable disney scenes all in one moment… it was terribly dreamy, soppy and cheesy and Collin and I totally revelled in it.